I was talking about the concept of eternity which goes beyond our comprehension: everything human has an end. Whatever has not a beginning and an end (it' eternal) for us it's impossible to understand. It's a mystery. Just as God is.

So what? Quantum are a quantity of energy that comes from "nothing" (and disappears afetr a while), just about me and you: before we were born we were nothing: then sperm and ovulus join and something happens: we build up a unique personality out of nothing.
Anyway the conservation of energy in time is a well defined concept even in quantum mechanics, and your example doesn't eclude in any way the existence of God.

Before we were born, we weren't "nothing". All that we are today is an accumulation of different chemicals that work in a truly harmonic way to create us, our nervous sytem, and everything that makes us an organism. The atoms that we have gathered through our lives, we did not gather from a vacuum. Organisms use their environment to gather nutrition etc in order to grow. When my cells gather ATP in order to fuel themselves, they don't get ATP out of a vacuum, whether it is now, or when I was in my mothers womb, the ATP comes from the surrounding environment.

Now in Quantum fluctuation, it's a very tricky case, because realistically speaking, unless any of us have gone through the math of quantum mechanics, we know **** all about what we're talking about. We only know the concepts as explained to the general public so we can get somewhat of an idea.

Our rationality and our reasoning breaks down in the quantum level. We are born with an intuition in the physical laws surrounding us. However, right now you don't even care about surface tension in water, and if you didn't learn about it, you probably wouldn't even know what it was. However, if you were the size of a water strider, you'd be very much aware of surface tension. The same applies to quantum mechanics.

One might argue that if in some alternate possibility, we were all sub atomic particles, we'd have an intimate understanding of what was going on, however we would find it extremely hard to rationalize with what would happen in the "big world".

The point i'm trying to make is that, even though quantum mechanics might go against everything that our brains rationalize, the math tells us it is true, and the tests detect sub-atomic particles popping in and out of existence, in a VACUUM.

That's why your concept of nothingness in this case is wrong, and why that comparison is also wrong.

Before we were born, we weren't "nothing". All that we are today is an accumulation of different chemicals that work in a truly harmonic way to create us, our nervous sytem, and everything that makes us an organism. The atoms that we have gathered through our lives, we did not gather from a vacuum. Organisms use their environment to gather nutrition etc in order to grow. When my cells gather ATP in order to fuel themselves, they don't get ATP out of a vacuum, whether it is now, or when I was in my mothers womb, the ATP comes from the surrounding environment.

Now in Quantum fluctuation, it's a very tricky case, because realistically speaking, unless any of us have gone through the math of quantum mechanics, we know **** all about what we're talking about. We only know the concepts as explained to the general public so we can get somewhat of an idea.

Our rationality and our reasoning breaks down in the quantum level. We are born with an intuition in the physical laws surrounding us. However, right now you don't even care about surface tension in water, and if you didn't learn about it, you probably wouldn't even know what it was. However, if you were the size of a water strider, you'd be very much aware of surface tension. The same applies to quantum mechanics.

One might argue that if in some alternate possibility, we were all sub atomic particles, we'd have an intimate understanding of what was going on, however we would find it extremely hard to rationalize with what would happen in the "big world".

The point i'm trying to make is that, even though quantum mechanics might go against everything that our brains rationalize, the math tells us it is true, and the tests detect sub-atomic particles popping in and out of existence, in a VACUUM.

That's why your concept of nothingness in this case is wrong, and why that comparison is also wrong.

Alright then, you had me: sorry but I'm not a scientist. The point is that science is the wrong tool to deal with spirituality because science treats the laws of physics, which are comprehensible by the human logic.

Spirituality, love, God etc. are topics not always comprehensible by human logic and at times might look absurd or without meaning. But only in appearence: everything that happens has a meaning and a reason, even if we temporarily fail to acknowledge it.

The catholic church are the Lourdes people, so I'd go with their numbers over your pulled-out-of-the-ass figure of 7,000. And that's still a pale figure when compared to the number of visitors.

Who gives a f()ck? Probably only those 7000 deserved to be healed.
What should I know, am I God? Stop bothering me with this silly childish *****.

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

So you're talking about the scientific evidence and the evidence which is not evidence then. Because you said there was plenty of evidence and all that you give is made up figures about Lourdes. Are you ready to admit that you have no evidence at all yet?

Of course... Listen: not only I am ready to admit that I have no scientific evidence of the existence of God, but I am glad to tell you that no one ever scientifically demonstrated the existence of God, and on one is interested to: because science is a topic to measure the laws of physics, which are comprehensible by the human brains, while spirituality is far from comprehensible by our limited mind...
Have you read John Paul II's "fides et ratio" encyclic?
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

I don't care why you believe. You're trying to convince me, with evidence, that I should believe, that's what I'm interested in.

You don't care about lots of things brother: for example you didn't care about the fact that science is not a tool to treat spiritual matters: you knew it, as you are obviously more educated than me, and you intentionally brought the discussion onto a scientific field: you also slandered me calling me dishonest, because your true goal is not to find the truth: your goal is to mantain your prejudice towards religion out of sensless pride, and you committed a dishonest action to try and prove so. You used myself treating the wrong arguments to achieve your dirty sad, insane, useless purpose: to discredit all the good that religion does, out of a personal delusion of yours, which is most probably related to your family of origin. That's not quite a manly thing to do, and you also adopted the same attitude you accuse the Church of: manipulation.
Now that I've demonstrated that, you can go take it in your ass as always.

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

And here are some people showing us the love that binds us all together:

Just in case you didn't remember, mr. educated guy, the Nazis were ATHEISTS, which believed in human logic and rationality... They made very nice "scientific" experiments on jewish people.
Nazism is the living proof of how human logic can fail man more than faith and cause disasterss... If the Nazis respected Jesus' words they wouldn't have made that massacre.
So you should be ashamed of yourself for bringing the attempted genocide of an entire religion (Jewish) by atheists (the Nazis) in an argument that talks about the value of Faith.
Now go take it up your ass AGAIN.

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

You can call it what you want. But referring to your own consciousness as a "soul" doesn't mean that the supernatural exists, any more than calling my dog "Sasquatch" means that Bigfoot is real.

Bull*****. If my soul exists then also spirituality exists and therefore the possibility of as supreme being and all the rest. Don't f()ck around with me.

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

"Love" is an abstraction which really has no objective meaning. It's telling that you will latch onto something vague and ill defined in an attempt to prove the existence of your equally vague and ill defined deity.

yet another wagonload of bull*****

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

Besides which I'm not trying to demonstrate to you that my wife loves me because frankly it's none of your business. You're trying to demonstrate that your god loves me (and failing miserably) and desperately changing the subject now your apologetics have been exposed as shallow and meaningless.

Then why should be your business me bringing the scientific evidence that God loves you? It's not my problem: he loves you, and that's it period. No scientific evidence of this dick about it.

So... here you are chanting victory again because I didn't scientifically demonstrate the existence of God... Any educated man (as you most surely are, altho I'm not sure if the word "man" can really suites you), knows that science is the wrong parameter to discuss spiritual matters, which go far beyond human limited comprehension (altho they don't seem to go beyond your haughtiness), so you intentionally brought the discussion on the scientific field, knowing also that I have not studied science nor theology.
You just wanted to win the argument at the eyes of the readers, and ignore the goal of it: finding the truth. You also tried to slander me calling me dishonest, but "dishonest" is a well suited adjective for what you've done here, isn't it?

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Originally Posted by squealpiggy

Wait, are you suggesting that your directionless dribbling was a success!?

Oh, poor sad ****, you thought you had me on my knees and you were going for the kill... Science has nothing to do with faith, as I stated at the beginning of this argument.

You tried and demonstrate me with awful logic how sad and loveless life is and badly failed again.

And you know what? This thread served right me to prove my own faith, which I'm glad to tell you is stronger than ever... Thanks to you, sad f()cker.

Alright then, you had me: sorry but I'm not a scientist. The point is that science is the wrong tool to deal with spirituality because science treats the laws of physics, which are comprehensible by the human logic.

Spirituality, love, God etc. are topics not always comprehensible by human logic and at times might look absurd or without meaning. But only in appearence: everything that happens has a meaning and a reason, even if we temporarily fail to acknowledge it.

I don't know if you completely understood my post, or maybe I wasn't clear, but the whole point i was trying to make, was that physics as a whole, is NOT comprehensible by human logic. You can't just solve everything through thought experiment. We need math to interpret how the universe functions. We only know so much about physics because of the accumulation of mankind throughout history. If it was human logic, I would be able to understand all, or most fields of physics like the back of my hand.

Now, at the whole argument that you and squealpiggy are having, to objectively debate about the existence of a deity, is almost impossible. You must acknowledge that the concept of spirituality, and "god" is completely subjective.

I'm speaking from a completely objective point of view. The thing is, you're approaching this debate completely wrong. From the beginning you attempted to sway the odds in your favor by making claims that are clearly unscientific. You cannot talk about spirituality or "love" without acknowledging that your view on it is merely one of many. You're automatically on the losing side if you try to convince others with scientific data. It just won't happen. There just isn't any that is statistically significant.

What you SHOULD do, (in my opinion) is show how your beliefs and philosophies improve your moral values, and make you a better person and ultimately make you happier in life.That would be a much stronger point.

I don't know if you completely understood my post, or maybe I wasn't clear, but the whole point i was trying to make, was that physics as a whole, is NOT comprehensible by human logic. You can't just solve everything through thought experiment. We need math to interpret how the universe functions. We only know so much about physics because of the accumulation of mankind throughout history. If it was human logic, I would be able to understand all, or most fields of physics like the back of my hand.

Now, at the whole argument that you and squealpiggy are having, to objectively debate about the existence of a deity, is almost impossible. You must acknowledge that the concept of spirituality, and "god" is completely subjective.

I'm speaking from a completely objective point of view. The thing is, you're approaching this debate completely wrong. From the beginning you attempted to sway the odds in your favor by making claims that are clearly unscientific. You cannot talk about spirituality or "love" without acknowledging that your view on it is merely one of many. You're automatically on the losing side if you try to convince others with scientific data. It just won't happen. There just isn't any that is statistically significant.

What you SHOULD do, (in my opinion) is show how your beliefs and philosophies improve your moral values, and make you a better person and ultimately make you happier in life.That would be a much stronger point.

Good point there.

Jesus' words, (only if followed correctly and intelligently), prevent betrayals, killings, misdeeds, poverty, and all those sins that mortify the body and the spirit. Enough said.

Who gives a f()ck? Probably only those 7000 deserved to be healed.
What should I know, am I God? Stop bothering me with this silly childish *****.

You brought in Lourdes as an argument. The fact that you are now furiously backpedaling is testament to how much of a poor example it was and how little you had thought about it.

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Of course... Listen: not only I am ready to admit that I have no scientific evidence of the existence of God, but I am glad to tell you that no one ever scientifically demonstrated the existence of God, and on one is interested to: because science is a topic to measure the laws of physics, which are comprehensible by the human brains, while spirituality is far from comprehensible by our limited mind...

In other words science and religion are incompatible because science deals with reality and religion does not.

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Have you read John Paul II's "fides et ratio" encyclic?
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

You haven't read it so I don't know why you're asking if I have.

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You don't care about lots of things brother: for example you didn't care about the fact that science is not a tool to treat spiritual matters:

Because "spiritual matters" are imaginary.

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you knew it, as you are obviously more educated than me, and you intentionally brought the discussion onto a scientific field: you also slandered me calling me dishonest, because your true goal is not to find the truth: your goal is to mantain your prejudice towards religion out of sensless pride, and you committed a dishonest action to try and prove so.

This topic is about threatening people who do not believe in a specific brand of superstition with the silly and unpleasant concept of hell and I have been responding to it appropriately. You decided to butt in using what you thought were novel apologetics but which were, in fact, centuries old. Every argument you have made has been sillier than the last and now you're desperately trying to paint yourself as the victim of some sort of bullying. Your sense of smug religious self satisfaction is one of the issues I have with organised religion. It is based upon sitting in a circle and agreeing with one another, and when your assertions are challenged you are forced to scramble to try and counter how silly they are.

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You used myself treating the wrong arguments to achieve your dirty sad, insane, useless purpose: to discredit all the good that religion does, out of a personal delusion of yours, which is most probably related to your family of origin.

My family is catholic so once again you've made an assumption which is demonstrably wrong. Furthermore I'm not intending to "discredit all the good that religion does" particularly. Remember this is a thread stating that if you're not sharing the TS's particular delusion then you will be horribly punished by an allegedly loving god.

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That's not quite a manly thing to do, and you also adopted the same attitude you accuse the Church of: manipulation.
Now that I've demonstrated that, you can go take it in your ass as always.

Don't worry, before and after every argument I make I chop some logs and fix up my 78 mustang before watching the hockey with a beer.

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Just in case you didn't remember, mr. educated guy, the Nazis were ATHEISTS,

No they weren't.

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which believed in human logic and rationality...

No they didn't.

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They made very nice "scientific" experiments on jewish people.

A big concern in science is the question of ethics. The Nazis didn't have any, hence Herr Mengele's lack of them.

The Angel of Death of the Nazi camps Josef Mengele was in fact a catholic, the same as Hitler by the way.

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Nazism is the living proof of how human logic can fail man more than faith and cause disasterss... If the Nazis respected Jesus' words they wouldn't have made that massacre.

The Nazis (or at least Hitler) did respect Jesus' words. But Hitler believed in a conspiracy theory that Paul the Jewish saint had corrupted the religion. Hitler was plenty religious though.

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So you should be ashamed of yourself for bringing the attempted genocide of an entire religion (Jewish) by atheists (the Nazis) in an argument that talks about the value of Faith.
Now go take it up your ass AGAIN.

And now we get to the punchline of this section of the discussion: The picture I posted was nothing to do with Nazis and in fact showed prisoners in a Soviet Gulag. I could equally show pictures of people being burned for witchcraft in Africa or of people being beheaded for "adultery" in Afghanistan or of the sort of devices used by catholic interrogators in the middle ages to show the love that connects us all to those accused of heresy...

The simple fact is that your definition of "love" is simply not reflected in reality.

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Bull*****. If my soul exists then also spirituality exists and therefore the possibility of as supreme being and all the rest. Don't f()ck around with me.

Your soul doesn't exist.

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yet another wagonload of bull*****

Then why should be your business me bringing the scientific evidence that God loves you? It's not my problem: he loves you, and that's it period. No scientific evidence of this dick about it.

You said there was evidence, we asked you for it, you were unable to deliver.

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So... here you are chanting victory again because I didn't scientifically demonstrate the existence of God...

You said there was evidence, we asked you for it, you were unable to deliver.

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Any educated man (as you most surely are, altho I'm not sure if the word "man" can really suites you), knows that science is the wrong parameter to discuss spiritual matters, which go far beyond human limited comprehension (altho they don't seem to go beyond your haughtiness), so you intentionally brought the discussion on the scientific field, knowing also that I have not studied science nor theology.

It's more an issue that you haven't given your own alleged faith even the most rudimentary scrutiny. You simply haven't given it much thought. Now you're in a crisis of faith because the arguments you borrowed that seemed unassailable are in fact smoke and mirrors and do not stand up to reality.

If you had bothered contemplating your own religion then you might not be getting quite so mad about it now. I am amused however that you can accuse me of being "not very manly" and then passive-aggressively attempt to turn this situation around and cry that you're being bullied by a superior intellect. Wah wah.

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You just wanted to win the argument at the eyes of the readers, and ignore the goal of it: finding the truth. You also tried to slander me calling me dishonest, but "dishonest" is a well suited adjective for what you've done here, isn't it?

I don't see how I've been dishonest. Let's rewind to the beginning of my argument with you here: YOU STARTED IT! I simply pointed out how your arguments are stupid.

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Oh, poor sad ****, you thought you had me on my knees and you were going for the kill... Science has nothing to do with faith, as I stated at the beginning of this argument.

But you did say that there was evidence and when asked for it failed to deliver it.

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You tried and demonstrate me with awful logic how sad and loveless life is and badly failed again.

I did no such thing as I think no such thing. It's illuminating of the religious mindset however that you can come to the conclusion that because I do not consider myself to be a mindless serf to the arbitrary whims of a mysterious and unfathomable super-tyrant in the sky, then my life must be "sad and loveless".

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And you know what? This thread served right me to prove my own faith, which I'm glad to tell you is stronger than ever... Thanks to you, sad f()cker.